In this informative and lively volume, Margaret L. King synthesizes a large body of literature on the condition of western European women in the Renaissance centuries (1350-1650), crafting a much-needed and unified overview of women's experience in Renaissance society. Utilizing the perspectives of social, church, and intellectual history, King looks at women of all classes, in both usual and unusual settings. She first describes the familial roles filled by most women of the day—as mothers, daughters, wives, widows, and workers. She turns then to that significant fraction of women in, and acted upon, by the church: nuns, uncloistered holy women, saints, heretics, reformers,and witches, devoting special attention to the social and economic independence monastic life afforded them. The lives of exceptional women, those warriors, queens, patronesses, scholars, and visionaries who found some other place in society for their energies and strivings, are explored, with consideration given to the works and writings of those first protesting female subordination: the French Christine de Pizan, the Italian Modesta da Pozzo, the English Mary Astell. Of interest to students of European history and women's studies, King's volume will also appeal to general readers seeking an informative, engaging entrance into the Renaissance period.

The Renaissance was a period of significant cultural transformation in Europe: women were both agents and objects of this historical process. The period witnessed revolutions in nearly every cultural domain, including the controversies of the Reformation, the rise of nascent capitalism, the influence of Humanism, advances in science and medicine, and shifts in the boundaries between public and private life, all of which profoundly affected women's lives. A Cultural History of Women in the Renaissance covers the period 1400-1650, giving an overview of how changes in social, educational, economic, scientific, religious and artistic paradigms affected cultural constructions of gender and the lived experiences of women in the period. Each chapter draws on a wide range of sources to chart the complex and often contradictory cultural logics of gender in Renaissance culture.

In the period 1450 to 1650 in Europe, hair was braided, curled, shaped, cut, colored, covered, decorated, supplemented, removed, and reused in magic, courtship, and art, amongst other things. On the body, Renaissance men and women often considered hair a signifier of order and civility. Hair style and the head coverings worn by many throughout the period marked not only the wearer's engagement with fashion, but also moral, religious, social, and political beliefs. Hair established individuals' positions in the period's social hierarchy and signified class, gender, and racial identities, as well as distinctions of age and marital and professional status. Such a meaningful part of the body, however, could also be disorderly, when it grew where it wasn't supposed to or transgressed the body's boundaries by being wild, uncovered, unpinned, or uncut. A natural material with cultural import, hair weaves together the Renaissance histories of fashion, politics, religion, gender, science, medicine, art, literature, and material culture. A necessarily interdisciplinary study, A Cultural History of Hair in the Renaissance explores the multiple meanings of hair, as well as the ideas and practices it inspired. Separate chapters contemplate Religion and Ritualized Belief, Self and Society, Fashion and Adornment, Production and Practice, Health and Hygiene, Sexuality and Gender, Race and Ethnicity, Class and Social Status, and Cultural Representations.

"An impressive collection of 29 essays by British, American and Italian scholars on important historical, artistic, cultural, social, legal, literary and theatrical aspects of women's contributions to the Italian Renaissance, in its broadest sense. Many contributions are the result of first-hand archival research and are illustrated with numerous unpublished or little-known reproductions or original material. The subjects include: women and the court ( Dilwyn Knox, Evelyn S Welch, Francine Daenens and Diego Zancani ); women and the church ( Gabriella Zarri, Victoria Primhak, Kate Lowe, Francesca Medioli and Ruth Chavasse ); legal constraints and ethical precepts ( Marina Graziosi, Christine Meek, Brian Richardson, Jane Bridgeman and Daniela De Bellis ); female models of comportment ( Marta Ajmarm Paola Tinagli and Sara F Matthews Grieco ); women and the stage ( Richard Andrews, Maggie Guensbergberg, Rosemary E Bancroft-Marcus ); women and letters ( Diana Robin, Virginia Cox, Pamela J Benson, Judy Rawson, Conor Fahy, Giovanni Aquilecchia, Adriana Chemello, Giovanna Rabitti and Nadia Cannata Salamone )."

Winner of the Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize A new history uncovers the crucial role women played in the great transformations of medical science and health care that accompanied the Italian Renaissance. In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life—from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries—drove the Italian medical economy. In convent pharmacies, pox hospitals, girls’ shelters, and homes, women were practitioners and purveyors of knowledge about health and healing, making significant contributions to early modern medicine. Sharon Strocchia offers a wealth of new evidence about how illness was diagnosed and treated, whether by noblewomen living at court or poor nurses living in hospitals. She finds that women expanded on their roles as health care providers by participating in empirical work and the development of scientific knowledge. Nuns, in particular, were among the most prominent manufacturers and vendors of pharmaceutical products. Their experiments with materials and techniques added greatly to the era’s understanding of medical care. Thanks to their excellence in medicine urban Italian women had greater access to commerce than perhaps any other women in Europe. Forgotten Healers provides a more accurate picture of the pursuit of health in Renaissance Italy. More broadly, by emphasizing that the frontlines of medical care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Strocchia encourages us to rethink the history of medicine.

An examination of how Renaissance textual practices and new forms of knowledge transformed notions of sex and sexuality in France.

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